Limehurst Times Autumn Term 2017
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LIMEHURST TIMES AUTUMN TERM 2017 Dear Parents/Carers Welcome to our end-of-term newsletter. I write to you feeling very buoyed having just seen our students perform magnificently in our wonderful production of High In this issue: School Musical. It was just was needed at the end of a busy term! Since I last wrote to you, we have seen one year group leave and a new year group Keystage 4 News arrive. I’d like to say a big well done to our Year 7 cohort who arrived in September. They have settled in brilliantly, and impressed us all with their attitude to learning. Y11 Exams I must take this opportunity to mention our students’ fantastic GCSE results MFL last summer. Their results meant that Limehurst was ranked 4th out of the 37 Music secondary schools in Leicestershire, and also confirmed our position as the highest achieving school in Charnwood. We are above national average in every ADT headline measure, and well above average in many. I believe this to be a wonderful achievement for our school, and is a hugely merited reward for all of Sports the hard work that we do on a daily basis. You can learn more about our exam results by going to www.limehurst.org.uk and selecting School Information and Student Support then Performance. Also on that page are guides to help you understand new GCSE English grades and other accountability measures. Room 10 Elsewhere in this newsletter, you will find term dates for the rest of this year and also for 2018-19. Please look at these carefully when planning family holidays. Our Community Liaison term dates for 2018-19 are different to those published by Leicestershire County Council, but they are in line with all of our main feeder schools so disruption to you Useful information should be minimised. Dates for you diary Finally, a reminder that we finish at 1.15pm on Thursday 21st December. I wish all staff, students and their families a peaceful and relaxing holiday, and I look forward to seeing you on the first day of term, Monday 8th January. Yours sincerely Jonathan Mellor Headteacher Achievement in a Caring Environment KEYSTAGE 4 NEWS KEYSTAGE 4 NEWS Y10 Y11 Year tens are getting to grips with their GCSE curriculums, they It is all go for the Year elevens as they are starting to apply to their post 16 destination choices. They have completed a topic on how to manage their increased have had information sessions in their assembly time from a wide range of post 16 providers. Some work load and stand them in good stead for the coming year. students are very focused on what route they want to pursue while others are less sure, but there is plenty of advice and guidance given from school and our Independent Career Advisor. Many of the We are always looking ahead to the future for our students, so providers will also be attending the Y11 parents evening on Monday 15th January where students and career plans are considered throughout their time at Limehurst. parents can listen to the advice together. For a group of Y10 students they were able to investigate a huge range of career opportunities at the Birmingham Skills Show in November. To also prepare the students for the world of work a group of Y11 students have attended a Skills Workshop in school. The workshop was an opportunity to enable students to realise their skills and It is one of the U.K.’s largest skills shows and is divided into five areas how they can be applied to the jobs they may be interested in and identify skill gaps. Local business that focus on a particular industry sector; Construction and Logistics, volunteers came into school to discuss work related skills with them and helped students to make an Engineering and Technology, Health and Hospitality, Digital and action plan for personal development. Business, Creative and Design. Students were able to talk to experts, “have a go” and find out about jobs, courses and industries they may not have known were out there. Y11 EXAMS STUDENT REVIEWS “I went to the Creative/Art demonstrations and learnt how to use computer drawing pads and watched a Y11 will be sitting their final GCSE exams in the summer. We have put together a booklet to help you textiles fashion show. It was all very informative and good fun.” support your child during the next few months. “I am going to start researching into apprenticeship.” The Examinations section of the website has important information such as the summer timetable, rules and regulations pertaining to exams including our internal appeals procedure for controlled “I would recommend this visit for all students. It gave me some good ideas about my future”. assessments and non-exam assessments. Your child will receive a copy of their individual timetable in March. “It really started me thinking about what I want to do when I leave school”. Please encourage your child to attend revision sessions that teachers have arranged during lunch and “It was a great experience which has really helped me. I found out there were a lot of opportunities and after school. If your child needs help they should ask his/her subject teachers. different routes to careers”. If you have any exam related queries, please feel free to contact Miss Narsing. 2 Achievement in a Caring Environment Achievement in a Caring Environment 3 MFL MUSIC Y9 FRENCH THEATRE TRIP HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL On Thursday 16th November, thirty Y9 students had the amazing opportunity to see a French play Pupils from all Year Groups really raised the bar with their two nights of performing Disney’s High at Loughborough High School. This year the play was called “Les filles”. The story was about several School Music on Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th December. Fantastic performances were delivered teenagers, who lived on the same street. The play portrayed the hectic and complicated lives of the by the whole cast. After a performance like this, we are already considering the possibilities for our teenagers and what was important to them. There was even a cameo appearance by Justin Bieber! next show. As always, our students were very well behaved and very polite during the performance. They were a credit to the school and to their parents. The actors were French native speakers and so the students were challenged by the level of language and different French accents. Miss Cadenhead, Mr Williams and Miss Turner were very impressed with how much the students were able to understand and how positively they met the challenge. Some students even demonstrated interpreting skills as they translated parts of the play at high speed to their peers! The Y9 students felt very good about the experience and they were, understandably, proud of their linguistic skills. One student even spoke of how beneficial it was to see and hear the French language used in a new scenario. Our thanks go to Duncan Gough, for continuing our links with Loughborough High School, allowing our students to be a part of this invaluable experience and for always making us feel so welcome. CLASS BAND Miss Cadenhead MFL Department 7BN and 7CW have been taking part in the class band project for the Autumn Term. Pupils within these forms have been specialising in a number of woodwind and brass instruments and performed to the rest of their year group of Monday December 11th. After this date, 2 more Y7 forms will start their project. It is hoped that some of these students will take up their instrument, have lessons and join our school band. CONCERT December 13th saw our end of term concert. The Loughborough Schools’ Area Orchestra entertained us with familiar tunes including ‘Skyfall’, ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’, ‘Walking in the Air’, and ‘I Know Him So Well’. Our newly formed Steel Band performed two Christmas pieces and our recently reformed Hand bell group took part in their first school performance. In addition, the audience were entertained by several short pieces by the Limehurst School Band as well as numerous duets and solo items that demonstrated how talented our pupils are. 4 Achievement in a Caring Environment Achievement in a Caring Environment 5 ADT NEWS ADT NEWS EXCELLENCE IN ART: THIS TERM’S ‘WOW WALL’ HAS BEEN STEM VISIT TO LOUGHBOROUGH UPDATED! UNIVERSITY Each term, a selection of outstanding work is presented within Art Y9 students have been involved in a STEM to showcase and inspire! This particular range of work provides project run by a University Post Grad student exceptional skill in a range of differing materials. Phoebe Bonshor to promote engineering to young people. The demonstrates sophisticated pencil skills with her scissor study; project involves taking apart an angle poise Razwana Nasrin’s biro drawing shows great detail; Aminah lamp and turning it into a catapult! We were Chowdhury uses her expressive abstract portraiture skills, and Cole invited to the University to see some of their Lockwood’s funky use of polyprinting has produced this graphically engineering departments including CNC grungy print! Milling, Optical Engineering to see a visibility cloak and a wind tunnel…then we even saw a jet engine in action! FUTURE CHEF’S: Y7 AND Y8 CAN GCSE – FOOD PREPARATION AND NUTRITION COOK! We now have Y10 and Y11 classes following the new exam Y7 & Y8 are coming towards the end course in Food Preparation and nutrition. of the 1st rotation in their Food and Nutrition lessons, they have learnt The Y10 students have been looking at protein’s about the Eatwell guide and the functions and characteristics.